The Four Cappadocians: St Macrina the Younger, St Gregory the Theologian, St Basil the Great, St Gregory of Nyssa
THE MISTAKE OF THE HUMANISTS
This, however, is only one side of Western culture. The mistake of the humanists of the Renaissance and the men of the eighteenth century, and to some extent of modern scholars, is that they have regarded the humanist tradition as the only creative and formative element in Western culture and have shut their eyes to the existence of other elements or else have condemned everything else as barbaric, irrational, and inhuman. In reality there is another tradition that is even more important than humanism in the development of European culture—the Christian tradition. This, like the tradition of humanism, has come into Western Europe from outside and has become acclimatized and assimilated by a thousand years of spiritual labor. It is a more recent importation than the other, but on the other hand it has gone much deeper, since it has not been limited to the educated and leisured classes, but has penetrated to the roots of society—to the peasants—and has deeply influenced the life and thought of the common people.
First as rivals, then as mistress and servant, then as rivals again, but sometimes as friends and coadjutors, these two great traditions have together been the conscious spiritual and intellectual sources of Western culture.
Today both of them are threatened, and threatened on the whole by the same enemies, but both still exist, and as long as they exist Europe still survives.
Nevertheless this situation does not necessarily lead to a closer understanding and cooperation between Christians and humanists. There are many Christians who take an extremely pessimistic view of the prospects of Western culture. They believe that Europe is done for and that the future of Christianity lies elsewhere. As Canon Vidler has written:
Generally speaking, Christians see the European breakdown as the culmination and disintegration of the tremendous experiment that began at the Renaissance. That is, the experiment of European man to build a civilization with himself at the center and independently of God and his sovereign rule. (“Secular Despair and Christian Faith”)
From this point of view there can be no question of an alliance between Christianity and Humanism, or rather the de facto alliance that does in some sort exist is a compromising one from which Christians must disentangle themselves as quickly and as completely as possible. And yet this process of disentanglement is not so simple as it seems at first sight. After 1800 years of intercourse there has been so much mutual interpenetration that all kinds of patterns of thought and behavior have been formed which have become a second nature to us, and the average Christian does not realize how much his moral outlook is conditioned by humanist influences.
THE ORIGINS OF HUMANITARIANISM
Take the case of humanitarianism. No doubt humanitarianism is on the decline in the modern world, but it is still strong and nowhere is it stronger than among English and American Christians. Yet humanitarianism is not a purely Christian movement any more than it is a purely humanist one. It is a typical example of the impact of the humanist tradition on Christianity and vice versa. Certainly we cannot regard the humanitarian achievements of the last two centuries as secure today, but in this matter at least the secular humanists and the Christians are very closely united—much more closely united, I think, than the different Christian bodies are in their defense of the rights of the Church against the secular state. And if today there was any question of reviving the practice of judicial torture or the reintroducing of public executions, there is no doubt that the very Christians who are most critical of humanism would be loudest in their protests.
The fact is that very few people have a clear idea of what a strictly non-humanist Christianity would be like. Of course they are aware of the existence of that type of extreme sectarianism that is content to be as “ignorant as a mule” but I am sure that is not the kind of thing they want. It is no doubt possible to find examples of non-humanist Christianity that are more admirable than this, but they are a long way away. Perhaps the best example I can quote is that of the Archpriest Avakkum who was burnt alive in 1682 for his opposition to the reform of the Russian liturgy and whose autobiography is one of the classics of Russian literature. Now in some respects the religion of Avakkum seems just what is wanted if Christianity is to survive in a non-humanist totalitarian order, for he succeeded in existing and bearing witness to his faith under conditions that make the ordinary concentration camp seem like a kindergarten. But on the intellectual side his Christianity has no contact with ordinary rational life. He was a kind of Christian witch-doctor who could meet the Siberian shamans on their own ground but whose religion was as narrow as theirs. His lack of any humanist culture or ethic made him entirely dependent on a rigid observance of ritual order, such as crossing oneself with three fingers instead of with two. The latter seemed to him an act of apostasy far worse than any mere crime or act of immorality.
Now this kind of anti-humanist Christianity is not only contrary to the traditions of Western Christendom, which have admittedly been permeated by humanist influence, but it is alien from the spirit of Christianity itself.
THE HUMANIST DECISION OF THE APOSTOLIC CHURCH
The real decision was made by the apostolic Church when it turned from the Jews to the Gentiles, from the closed world of the synagogue and the law to the cosmopolitan society of the Roman Hellenistic world. In spite of his apparent anti-intellectualism, St. Paul was by no means unconscious of the value of humane letters in the work of evangelization. In fact he was himself the first Christian humanist and his speech to the Athenians, with its appeal to the Hellenistic doctrines of the unity of the human race, of divine providence and of the natural affinity between the human and divine natures, is the basic document of Christian humanism. All this is much more than a method of apologetic devised for a Hellenistic audience. It is an expression of St. Paul's sense of a certain affinity between Christianity and Hellenism owing to which the Hellenistic cities of the Eastern Roman Empire provided the necessary conditions for the propagation of the new faith.
What was the nature of this affinity? On the one hand Hellenism provided a humane ethos and a philosophy of human nature which were not to be found among other cultures, while on the other hand Christianity is distinguished from other religions by its doctrine of the Incarnate Word, through whom the Divine and Human Natures have been substantially united in the historic person of Jesus Christ, the mediator between God and Man.
It is clear that this essential Christian doctrine gives a new value to human nature, to human history and to human life, which is not to be found in the other great oriental religions. The more the latter insist on the transcendence and absoluteness of the Divine Nature, the more they widen the gulf between God and Man, so that they tend either to deny the reality of the material world or to regard it as essentially evil, so that the body is a prison into which the human soul has got caught. These ideas were so powerful in the ancient world that they have often threatened to invade Christianity, and it was only by using the methods of Hellenic culture and with the help of Christian humanists like St. Irenaeus and St. Gregory of Nyssa that the Church was able to vindicate the Christian doctrine of man.
To St. Gregory there is a profound analogy between man’s natural function as a rational being--the ruler of the world and the link between the intelligible and sensible orders—and the divine mission of the Incarnate Word that unites humanity with the divine nature and restores the broken unity of the whole creation. The natural order corresponds with the supernatural order and both form part of the same divine all-embracing plan of creation and restoration. The Incarnation restores human nature to its original integrity and with it the whole material creation, which is raised through man to a higher plane and integrated with the intelligible or spiritual order.
These doctrines are no doubt fundamentally Pauline, but with St. Gregory of Nyssa they are explicitly related to the tradition of Greek thought and to the Hellenic ideal of humanity. Moreover, St. Gregory of Nyssa with his brother, St. Basil, and their friend, St. Gregory Nazianzen, were also humanists in the more technical sense—great students and lovers of humane letters who had a decisive influence on the development of the culture of Orthodox Christendom. Today there is a tendency to view Eastern Christianity through Russian eyes and to stress those elements in the Byzantine tradition which are most remote from the humanist tradition, as we see it, for example, in Avakkum and Khomiakoff and Dostoevsky. But these represent the spirit of Russia rather than the Byzantine tradition. The real founders of the Byzantine culture were the great Cappadocian fathers of whom I have spoken, and behind all the later developments of Eastern Orthodoxy, which found so many different expressions in different ages and peoples, there lies this Christian Hellenism of the fourth century, which was also a Christian humanism.
It is true that there is another element in Orthodox Christianity that is neither Western nor humanist—I mean the tradition of the monks of the desert. But whereas the Byzantine culture was able to incorporate and Hellenize this tradition, thanks largely to St. Basil himself, the purely Oriental element in monasticism as represented by the leaders of Egyptian monasticism like Bgoul and Schenouti became unorthodox as well as non-humanist and was one of the driving forces behind the religious revolt which separated Egypt and Syria from the Orthodox Church.
THE GREAT ORIENTAL REACTION
It is therefore no accident that this great Orientalist reaction against Hellenic culture should have found its theological justification in a doctrine that denied the full humanity of Christ. Nor did the Oriental reaction stop at this point. For Monophysitism is only the first step in a far-reaching movement which carried the East away from Christianity and found its final expression in the uncompromising unitarian absolutism of Islam which rejects the whole idea of Incarnation and restores an impassable gulf between God and Man.
And thus while it is easy enough to conceive of an Oriental Christianity which has no affinity with any form of humanist culture, we must admit that it is very difficult in practice for such a Christianity to hold its own against the various forms of unorthodox or non-Christian spirituality—Manichean, Moslem or Monophysite—which make such a profound appeal to the Oriental mind.
No doubt there is the Christianity of Abyssinia which is Monophysite more by historical accident than by theological necessity and which has held its own for a thousand years against the pressure of Islam. And even in the case of Abyssinia we must not forget how much the national revival in the sixteenth century owed to the stimulus of Western culture and Western Christianity.
It is true that Christianity is not bound up with any particular race or culture. It is neither of the East or of the West, but has a universal mission to the human race as a whole. Nevertheless it is precisely in this universality that the natural bond and affinity between Christianity and humanism is to be found. For humanism also appeals to man as man. It seeks to liberate the universal qualities of human nature from the narrow limitations of blood and soil and class and to create a common language and a common culture in which men can realize their common humanity. Humanism is an attempt to overcome the curse of Babel which divides mankind into a mass of warring tribes hermetically sealed against one another by their mutual incomprehensibility. If this only means that humanism is attempting to build a new tower of Babel—a city of Man founded on pride and self will in ignorance and contempt of God—then no doubt humanism is anti-Christian. But this is not the only kind of humanism. As man needs God and nature requires grace for its own perfecting, so humane culture is the natural foundation and preparation for spiritual culture. Thus Christian humanism is as indispensable to the Christian way of life as Christian ethics and a Christian sociology. Humanism and Divinity are as complementary to one another in the order of culture, as are Nature and Grace in the order of being.
*Originally published in The Dublin Review, Winter, 1952.
